As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users are information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes, thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems, e.g., computer, personal computer workstation, portable computer, computer server, print server, network router, network hub, network switch, storage area network disk array, RAID disk system and telecommunications switch.
As consumer demand increases for smaller and denser information handling systems, manufacturers strive to integrate more computer components into a smaller space. This integration has led to the development of several applications, including high density compute modules. High density compute modules provide the computer processing resources of several computers in a small amount of space. A typical arrangement for a high density compute module system includes a shared power supply system, a management module, shared input-output (I/O) interfaces, a connection board (e.g., a back-plane or mid-plane) and the compute modules.
Blade compute modules, or “blades,” are miniaturized compute modules that typically are powered from a common power supply system and are cooled by a cooling system within a multi-compute module cabinet. Typically, a blade includes a circuit board with one or more processors, memory, a connection port, and possibly a disk drive for storage. By arranging a plurality of blades like books on a shelf in the multi-compute module cabinet, a high density multi-compute module system achieves significant cost and space savings over a plurality of conventional computers in separate enclosures. These savings result directly from the sharing of common resources, e.g., I/O interfaces, power supplies, cooling systems, enclosures, etc., and the reduction of space required by this type of multi-compute module system while providing a significant increase in available computer processing power.
Blades may be adaptable for a number of different input-output (I/O) interface protocols in a multi-compute module information handling system. Each of these I/O interface protocols may be interchanged to a user specified fabric, e.g., Ethernet network interface controller (NIC), Fibre Channel (FC), Infiniband, etc., by a modular daughter card associated with the respective blade, e.g., the modular daughter card may plug into a connector on the blade. Each daughter card connector is routed to a specific I/O interface module. All of the daughter cards connected to the specific I/O interface module must have the same fabric as that I/O interface module for proper operation thereof. If a fabric mismatch between a daughter card and an I/O interface module occurs the blade is typically disabled. All variations of daughter cards share a common mechanical form factor and also share a common electrical pin-out for interfacing to the compute module system. Because of the similar mechanical form factor and common electrical pin-out of the different modular daughter cards, it is not uncommon for a fabric mismatch to occur when a wrong daughter card is plugged into a connector (e.g., card socket) on the blade. In addition, even if the daughter cards connected to the blade have the correct fabrics, they can still be populated, e.g., plugged into, the wrong daughter card sockets, i.e., the daughter cards have been swapped. Installation of an incorrect daughter card or incorrect swapping of otherwise correct daughter cards will result in the blade being disabled and thereby becoming non-functional.